Undergraduate / Notre Dame Supplement Essay on project during high school [2]

Please help me with this! It's supposed to tell about an academic pursuit I have made during high school.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the stars. I remember spending summer nights lying on my lawn just gazing into the cosmos. Looking up at the sky is like looking into a secret world. It is unknown yet so fascinating. The feeling I would get when looking up at the night sky on those summer nights was one of exhilaration and amazement at what God had created. I wanted to learn all I could about the stars, planets, and everything in between. In high school I was given an opportunity to pursue my dream.

When I attended my freshmen orientation, I learned that an Astronomy class was available through an online course. Needless to say, I immediately signed up for it. The class taught me the basics of every aspect of astronomy. To perform lab reports for the class, we were introduced to the Harvard MicroObservatory Online Telescope. The final project for this class was a challenge to use that online telescope to research a topic of your choice and then publish your results on the Harvard website.

The telescope basically just takes pictures of wherever you set its coordinates to, but with these pictures the amount of things one can discover is limitless. For my project I decided to determine the distance to the stars. I chose this because on all those nights spent looking at the stars I knew they were far away, but I had no idea what the actual distance was. At first it seemed like a daunting task. After all, how can you determine the distance to something in outer space just from a picture? The trick is to determine the brightness of the object and compare it to something you know the distance to. In my case, this was the sun. After using the inverse-square law and a computer program that calculates the brightness in flux units, I discovered the distance to various stars ranging from ones in our own galaxy to ones that are so far away that we are viewing them as they were millions of years ago.

This project has inspired me because it has shown me how things that may seem impossible or unreachable can be met and overcome. All of it could not have been achieved, however, without the resources I was given access to in the class. At Notre Dame I know I will have access to many other great research opportunities like this rare one I was given in high school.

Undergraduate / Common App Essay (Multiple Sclerosis) [12]

This is my first draft of my essay. One of my biggest concerns is that I am not getting a point across, but just tell me what you think and please be very critical of it!

Everyone takes the occasional nap, but I knew this wasn't right. She would sleep from the time I got home till I went to bed. Work had already become too much for her to deal with. Her days had become almost constant cycles of sleep with waking moments spent coping with pain. It was difficult for me to watch the person I loved most, my mother, going through such intense pain. She dealt with so much, so why was I the one feeling self-pity?

As her illness progressed, it had a direct effect on my life. My after school activity started to consist of what seemed to be near constant trips to the doctor. To me, it didn't seem fair that I had to miss out on after school activities or hanging with my friends just to drive her around. It was frustrating not only because of what I missed out on but also because of the time we were forced to just wait for tests-and then more tests-to come back. This went on for months before we finally found what had been taking such a huge physical and emotional toll on my mom and me.

Multiple Sclerosis. I've now heard this word so many times it makes me sick. I'd heard of it before, but until last year it had no real meaning to me. Last year my life was changed forever. Last year my mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

Since then, things have changed dramatically for me. Though my mother is still quite independent, I have gained a lot of responsibility around the house. At first this was hard for me to handle. Mothers are supposed to take care of their children, not the other way around. Eventually, though, I adapted to the new chores and responsibilities. Having to rely more on myself for things has made me a fiercely independent person.

One of the worst parts of here disease is its unpredictability. My mom goes from being active and happy to bedridden and in pain in less than a day. These exacerbations come out of the blue, and used to annoy me more than anything. I remember looking forward to a shopping trip for weeks only to have it cancelled because she got sick. Times like that made me feel so angry, yet so guilty, because I always knew that it wasn't really my mom's fault. I've now learned to cope with this unpredictability, and it has helped me to better deal with any unexpected situation I might come across.

Before my mom stopped working, she was a Registered Nurse. My father and grandfather were both doctors. I grew up around hospitals, and was fairly sure I wanted to work in one. When I was younger, though, my motivations for wanting to practice medicine were ignorant ones that didn't fully consider whether it was something I was passionate about. Seeing what my mother goes through every day motivates me to work hard so that someday I will be able to become a doctor. Instead of letting my mother's illness take over my life, I want to find a way to make a difference.

For every hardship I have experienced because of Multiple Sclerosis, I know my mom has had to deal with so much more. The effects the disease has had on me, however, have helped me to discover who I really am. There were times this past year where I felt powerless, like when I saw my mom in pain. Those times were tough, but they forced me to change for the better. Looking back I see that those times revealed some of my most positive characteristics. I have come out a stronger, more independent, motivated person ready to take on the world.